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Staff Selections

Jan

Notes From No Man's Land

Eula Biss

These spare, sometimes lyric essays explore the legacy of race in America, artfully revealing in intimate detail how families, schools, and neighborhoods participate in preserving racial privilege. Faced with a disturbing past and an unsettling present, Biss still remains hopeful about the possibilities of American diversity, "not the sun-shininess of it, or the quota-making politics of it, but the real complexity of it."

Allana

The White Book

Han Kang, trns. by Deborah Smith

This is the perfect book to read on a snowy winter day. Han Kang's precise prose rendered exquisitely by translator Deborah Smith is hushed, contemplative, and mysterious. The short vignettes that make up this novel are dedicated to a series of white objects and offer a delicate introspection of the spirit's form, the past's confluence with the present, and memory. I was already a fan of The Vegetarian, but fell in love with this book even more. Best when read all the way through, near a window in a snowstorm.

Ian

So Long, See You Tomorrow

William Maxwell

Maxwell’s decisive and delicate evocations through language- and equally through a deep understanding of human emotions- make this a book that you think about long after the pages unapologetically pierce your conscious with beauty and subtlety.

Jeffrey

Warlight

Michael Ondaatje

Warlight is a story of love, secrets, desire and disappointment during and after World War II. The characters are intelligence agents and civilians fighting a war, but the action of the book focuses on their relationships with family, lovers, friends, and co-workers.

It is an anti-thriller: no chase scenes, very little violence, and never any evil masterminds to thwart in the nick of time. The only mystery is why people leave their family to fight wars and why people step back from danger and excitement to care for strangers in mundane but reliable ways. And yet there is a carefully constructed plot that engages and surprises the reader. You will care what happens to Nathaniel and his sister Rachel when their parents leave them in the care of others in 1945. An excellent novel.

Kathleen

The Winter Soldier

Daniel Mason

This atmospheric WWI novel is a gorgeous tale of war, medicine, love, and mystery. Vividly descriptive, I was engrossed in this world from the moment 22 year old Lucius gathered his bag, coat, and saber, and disembarked the train, and summoned a hussar.

Kelli

Beartown & Us Against You

Fredrik Backman

These books are about a minor league hockey team in the middle of nowhere. They are also about everything else in the universe. Families, small town mentalities, immigration, toxic masculinity, decisions that change the course of everyone's lives, the fragility and resilience of ourselves. Backman's prose reaches straight through your sternum to strangle your heart before he slowly resuscitates you. I cried cover to cover, laughed throughout, and found humanity in every character of this novel.

Lindsay

Grant Wood: A Life

R. Tripp Evans

Evans' fresh and forceful biography hacks through half a century of misconception and smokescreen obscuring essential truths about Iowa's most famous artist, Grant Wood. Thoroughly researched, generously illustrated and vastly readable Evans' book helps us decode not only Wood the individual's art and life (particularly the effecs of his closest homosexuality) but also the fascinating rise and fall of the American Regionalist Movement that Wood came to symbolize. Evans exposes the conflicting agendas that the art world, the media and the general public wanted this supposedly all-American home-grown art--and artist--to serve.

Lindsey

Debths

Susan Howe

Howe's gorgeous new poetry collection (rumored to possibly be her final) unspools over five sections, which also include an essay and her signature cut-up text. Written in part while in residence at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston, Debths interrogates the curatorial/archival impulse, American history, aging, law, poetry, and above all, loss. I think it's Howe at her clearest.

Mary

The Fifth Risk

Michael Lewis

Always compelling and accessible, Michael Lewis does our country a service by laying out clear reasons why this presidency is like no other, and shouldn’t be “normalized” by lazy commercial journalists. Gain insight into how our governmental departments work, and how much we rely on the capability, expertise, and good faith of our public officials for our well-being. For instance, learn about the businessman who has been trying for years to make you pay him for your weather warnings, funneling the fruits of years of research and development paid for by our tax dollars into his pocket, and find how he may be appointed to a position in our government so he can make that happen. Enlightening.

Paul

The Natural Way of Things

Charlotte Wood

This is an Australian, feminist, post-apocalyptic novel of rare quality and intensity. If you were taken away by Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tail, as I was, this dark atmospheric novel will scratch the same itch. Do not miss this one.

Robert

Golden Hill

Francis Spufford

I’m not generally a reader of historical fiction but since the talented Frances Spufford has offered up his first novel, I opened Golden Hill and I am not sorry. He sets the story in New York, 1746.
Richard Smith, a young man of some sophistication arrives from London with a large promissory note and he is secretive about what he intends to do with this fortune. As New York is still really a small town he is the subject of much speculation and rumors abound. Richard's multiple misadventures, unspool at a breathtaking pace. His characters emerge from all strata of society and he deals with a number of social issues on the way to a bang up conclusion. Spufford writes with a rare energy and wit and I think many will read this in one long sitting or wish they could.

Pages

Sam

The Obelisk Gate

N. K. Jemisin

Sometimes, it’s nice to sit down with a book that doesn’t demand too much attention. Unfortunately, this can often translate into a book that feels unfinished. Or that supplies its conflicts with too many easy solutions. None of this is the case for N. K. Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate, a novel that is at once breathtaking in scope and yet intimate in its many characterizations. Moving at a pace that feels more like a modern film than standard prose, Obelisk correspondingly has no extraneous parts. Everything, from the early introduction of what are identified as “boilbugs” to the mysterious inclusion of sporadic paragraphs that break into the first-person perspective, comes to have a lasting importance throughout Jemisin’s swift, spare plot. In many respects, it’s better to think of this second novel in the Broken Earth series as a kind of short story than a full fledged epic. One of the few shortcomings of this book is that it expects you to remember all of the events of The Fifth Season, to the point that readers might become lost in the opening chapters if they haven’t very recently finished its first installment. But for fans of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary trilogy, another Orbit Books publication, this will be a very familiar experience—once you start considering each entry as part of a larger whole, as opposed to something more self-contained, this issue becomes muted.
Just as with Fifth, and as so many of the best fantasy books do, Obelisk ends at an even brisker pace than it began, answering the previous pages’ most pertinent questions with higher and higher fantasy elements while still opening up all new questions, in a process that feels much like solving a difficult but satisfying puzzle—confusing at first but obvious once all the pieces have fallen into place. However, this fantasy book exists in a world all its own. Whereas so many other entries in the fantasy genre are beholden to authors like Tolkien or Martin, Jemisin’s world is consummately unique. The further the book progresses, the more ambiguous its setting becomes. To the point that a looming question becomes whether or not this book should be considered as science fiction more than fantasy. A question that may become mute once the third book hits, but that nevertheless provides a sense of sublime uncertainty once the story really kicks off. However, Obelisk’s best moments are purely character-driven. While this book is certainly short on new characters, the ones already established in Fifth are elevated to new levels of complexity. And it provides plenty of room for its flatter characters to become just as interesting as the main protagonists. For a book that involves floating obelisks and living, ten-thousand year old statues, Jemisin’s most insightful sections are profoundly, universally human.
This book isn’t without its faults. The plot does occasionally feel rushed and the setting is often detrimentally left to the reader to fill in the details, but more so is this an equally brilliant sequel to Jemisin’s Hugo award winning 2015 novel, and is yet another example of how fantasy is a genre all too often overlooked.

Sarah

Uprooted

Naomi Novik

While reading, I kept wanting to compare this book to some of my other favorites. To Howl's Moving Castle, except with a much more awesome Sophie and a deeper, more interesting relationship with Howl. To Sabriel, because of the magic-wielding girl protagonist and the uniqueness and clarity of the magic system. To The Hero and the Crown for its girl power and for its standing as a classic. Because I think this one will become a classic like that, a book that you read and then want to put into the hands of everyone you know who loves a wonderful, beautifully written fantasy featuring a wild, independent girl protagonist and a fascinatingly cranky "dragon". YA readers will love this, too, though be aware that there is some content that may make it better for 16+

Suzanne

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr

Took me a long time to get around to reading this. Now that I leave, I can’t wait to begin re-reading it. Every good thing you’ve heard about this book doesn’t do it justice.

Terry

Men Without Women

Haruki Murakami

An intriguing collection of stories by the Japanese master that examines the lives of several men and their often fraught relationships with women. It includes an interesting take on Kafka’s Metamorphosis.

Tim

Leaving Berlin

Joseph Kanon

Four years after the end of WWII, the city of Berlin is still divided into sectors and struggling back to life. Enter Alex Meier, a Jewish writer who fled to America during the Nazi regime but now, recently divorced from his American wife and denied citizenship, finds himself back in Germany. The CIA has made him an offer: become a spy for the US and perhaps you can return to the States. But Alex knows nothing about how to conduct espionage and his very first meeting with a contact goes horribly wrong. Filled with historical detail as well as artists and intellectuals who actually returned home to East Germany after the war (a wonderfully climactic moment takes place on the opening night of Brecht's Mother Courage), Mr. Kanon writes some of the most exciting post-war thrillers in print. Listed by NPR, the Washington Post and the NYT Book Review as one of the best books of the year (2015), this is a fantastic read!

Anthony

Ecodeviance: (Soma)Tics for the Future Wilderness

C. A. Conrad

Ecodeviance will harness you, as it harnesses hatred, for poetry. Or, for itself, which with adequate crystallization means: 'for us all.' The book's somatics (prose exercises designed to force embodiment) & the resultant poems, (spiral-staircases for bodies to trespass), yell/sing into your mouth. Because, human, the somatics believe in you, & in us, the wrong us, the wronged us.

Ben

An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace

Tamar Adler

Reviving the message of M.F.K. Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf, Tamar Adler writes about summoning mouth-watering meals from the humblest of ingredients. Part cookbook, part cooking philosophy, Adler simplifies the cooking process while at the same time elevating something as basic as an egg, stale bread, or even the rinds of cheese. One of the best food-related books I've ever read.

Deb

We Are Not Ourselves

Matthew Thomas

This is a novel set in Queens about an Irish American family of three generations. Eileen is the main force of incredible strength. She marries Ed Leary and he is basically a scientific genius with a personality that only a few people could deal with. Eileen and Ed have a dysfunctional but a very devoted bond to one another.

Things change. Ed becomes more eccentric. To read this, you don’t know what could possibly happen next. One of the finest books to read about passion and perseverance.

Denise

All the Birds, Singing

Evie Wyld

This is a haunting modern take on the Gothic novel by a writer whose prose is shrewd, razor-sharp, and relentless. Told through a series of flashbacks to and from a life grotesque, heartbreaking, and sometimes, in rare moments, quietly beautiful. We the readers occupy the same places Jake occupies, be they old farmhouses, the venomous Australian landscape, or in the company of human beings one never hopes to encounter. This novel is certainly not for delicate sensibilities, but for only those brave enough to face the harsh lights (and deep darkness) that we harbor inside us.

Emily J.

My Brilliant Friend

Elena Ferrante

The hype is real. Drop everything and start reading this series, and then wonder what you’re going to do until September, when the final book comes out. My Brilliant Friend, The Story of a New Name, and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay form a long coming-of-age tale centered around Elena and Lila, two best friends growing up poor, female, and intelligent in post-war Naples. This painful and wonderful female friendship forms a thread that carries us through the entire series. Ferrante’s writing is rare: precise, painfully honest, visceral, propulsive. She creates a world that is perfectly rendered, down to the smallest detail. The characters are real enough to hurt us terribly. And, rare for a multi-novel Bildungsroman, there is a real plot that keeps us turning the page. This is a perfect series for the long hot slightly suffocating days of summer.

Evan

BEFORE I BURN

Gaute Heivoll

Warm up February with this semiauthobiographical novel about a string of arsons in a small town in Norway in the 1970s. A unique, absorbing book based n true events, Before I Burn delivers the shadowy intrigues and psychological suspense of a Scandinavian crime novel on the one hand, and highly personal ruminations on family, place, and the author’s life as a writer on the other. The result is a “whydunit” that’s both an artful investigation into the psyche of an arsonist and a profound, poetic memoir.

Ingrid

Left Coast Roast

Hanna Neuschwander

Well over half of Left Coast Roast is a coffee enthusiast’s travel-guide to West Coast coffee. Author Hanna Neuschwander includes 55 nerdy roaster dossiers that chart the coast’s current and historic coffee cultures. The book is also a coffee primer. It explains coffee jargon, the seemingly mysterious seed-to-bean processes, and how one can roast and brew coffee at home. For anyone interested in coffee or wanting to be, Left Coast Roast is a bookshelf essential.

Jane

Universal Harvester

John Darnielle

Set in the disquiet of the rural midwest, John Darnielle's Universal Harvester is a book about mothers who leave, the men they leave behind, and the ways in which grief can breed an immutable and distinct urge to creative narrative where narrative cannot exist. The novel’s ensemble of protagonists, who span era, demographic, and origin, each find themselves at the mouth of the same cave: someone has spliced cuttings of cryptic, illegible, and sometimes-violent scenes onto dozens of VHS tapes, many of which have made their way back to the shelves of a sleepy video store in Nevada, Iowa. As they depart on the task of uncovering a dangerously well-kept secret, one that Darnielle, with his lyrical hand, situates beneath an undulating shroud of mystery, strangers become neighbors and neighbors become strangers. The book deftly explores the duende of midwestern landscape, the capabilities of surveillance at the brink of the Internet boom, and the tenuous nature of storytelling itself. Universal Harvester is a gothic Rear Window for the information age.

Joshua

Whirlaway

Poe Ballantine

available on 4-18-2018

After spending decades in a facility for the criminally insane that he probably didn’t belong in, Eddie Plum is assisted in escape by a sympathetic actor who is playing the part of the institution’s administrator. When refuge life in the tiny island village owned by the wealthy father who has disowned him becomes unbearably dull, he sets off for horse tracks and adventure. A chance meeting with an old friend opens up a mystery that leads him to question his own sanity, and everyone else’s. With the help of a telepathic dog Eddie manages to keep it together long enough to become a reputable antique vinyl record dealer and reunite with his long lost love before his life comes full circle.

In his latest novel Poe Ballantine serves up what his cult of loyal fans have come to expect, which is a fast-paced exploration of the gritty madness of underdogs and outsiders, told with a superb wit and artistry that blends Mark Twain and Hunter Thompson with Charles Bukowski and Carl Hiaasen while maintaining a distinct style of his own. If you enjoy screwball characters scrambling through the goat rodeo of their own questionable choices, and laugh-out-loud page turners, Whirlaway will spin you right where you want to be.

Katie

Imagine Wanting Only This

Kristen Radtke

This is one of those books that happened to find me when I most needed it. A memoir/graphic novel with haunting, poetic language, Radtke smashes the walls of genre. Imagine Wanting Only This would make a great gift for recent graduates or the struggling 20-somethings.

Liz

Touch

Courtney Maum

A very smart, very funny story about technology and intimacy. Made me ugly cry, several times, in public--this book gets at something very real and achy about what it's like being a human at exactly this moment.

Nancy

Elect H. Mouse State Judge

Nelly Reifler

Like a twisted x-rated adventure with your kids’ toys… H. Mouse is running for office but will not call the cops when his daughters are kidnapped on election day. What’s he got to hide? Barbie and Ken drag themselves from poolside (oh, what they do there!) leaving Skipper to wonder if her body will ever change. They suit up in camo and head for the woods to rescue the girls from the strange robot-like fundamentalist family unit hiding out in a van, waiting for the next phase of Ordination fulfillment. Crazy, a hoot, read in one sitting!

Ottavia

Elsewhere: A memoir

Richard Russo

Richard Russo blew me away with this memoir about his relationship with his mother, a self-proclaimed independent woman from a run-down upstate New York town. Russo writes with a poignant simplicity, making us care about his relationship with a more than difficult woman. We follow them from Gloversville, NY, to Arizona, to Illinois, to Maine, all the while watching Russo struggle with doubts about how he cares for her. It is so easy to be inside of the author's head, to see through his eyes, and yet see much more than he does. We want to help him, help her, shake their shoulders. A very thoughtful, funny, heartbreaking book, for anyone who's ever had a relationship with anyone. So, everyone.

Robb

Three Novels

Samuel Beckett

In Beckett's trilogy, he almost writes without characters, scenes or plots, relying instead on each sentence to propel these novels forward into the oblivion of the writer's imagination. Perfect for a serious yet sensitive laugh, as readers might expect from a writer who was stabbed in the heart by a pimp in his younger years.

Sheri

The Eighty-Dollar Champion

Elizabeth Letts

A true-life tale of man and horse literally leaping over inconceivable hurdles to fulfill their dreams. This is the story of immigrant Harry de Leyer and his rescued plow horse Snowman and their quest to win the jumping championship in the prestigious National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden. This is one of the most heart-felt stories of the bond between a man and his horse that I have ever read and I've read them all. Great reading for anyone in search of that rush you get watching anyone succeed against impossible odds.

Zoey

Rules Do Not Apply

Ariel Levy

Compulsively readable. Ariel Levy, a staff writer for the New Yorker, writes breathtakingly of her life as a writer, the loss of her unborn baby while on assignment in Mongolia, and the end of her marriage. The book is perceptive, transcendent, and heartbreaking. Levy writes about with the same sort of reverence about her life and her writing assignments for the New Yorker. If you, like me, seek out her brilliant stories in every issue, or even if you don't, you will be mesmerized once again.